Genetic And Epigenetic Nature Population Structure Of Betula Ermanii Populations From Different Altitudes In Changbai Mountain

Genetic and epigenetic diversity is the most important components of the biodiversity. Therefore, the plant species could modify its genetic and epigenetic structure to cope the environmental conditions, such as drought, salt, cold and other abiotic stress. For the reason given above, the studies of this field attracted more and more attentions.In this study, the genetic and epigenetic structure of Betula ermanii were assessed using the amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and methylation sensitive amplified polymorphism (MSAP) techniques. Our results revealed that both of the genetic and epigenetic diversity of alpine tundra (AT) group (49.89 % and 75.14 %) were higher than the subalpine forest (SF) group (37.34% and 34.46 %). However, there is higher genetic differentiation for the epigenetic structure (Fst=0.1755) than the genetic structure (Fst =0.0947) between the two groups.In addition, the percentage of methylated and hemimethylated loci (PMHL) was used to analyze the methylation pattern of the two ecological groups. The PMHL of the alpine tundra group ranged from 14.81 % to 50.94 % and from 28.30 % to 65.12 %, respectively. For the subalpine forest group, the PMHL varied from 3.70 % to 34.78 % and from 11.54 % to 39.53 %, respectively. Obviously, our results indicated that there is a hypomehylation in the subalpine forest group.To sump up, our findings indicated that the niche might be acted on the genetic and epigenetic structure of B. ermanii which is crucial for them to adapt to the altered environmental conditions.